A secondary school headteacher, who has worked in Brent education for 40 years, is retiring this week.

Mike Hulme has led Queen’s Park Community School (QPCS) in Aylestone Avenue, Brondesbury, for 12 years but his history with the school goes back much further.

He started his career back in 1976 teaching handicraft and technical drawing at Aylestone High School, which merged with two others to form QPCS in 1989.

It was at this time that he earned the nickname “Clipboard Mike” for regularly wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard around with him.

He quickly climbed up the ladder to join the senior leadership team, and later became Brent’s “Excellence in Cities” co-ordinator as well as co-ordinator for gifted and talented pupils.

As a senior manager, he oversaw the school’s £34million re-build and expansion in 2003 before taking up the post of headteacher the next year.

Ten years later, he would once again take charge of the school’s redevelopment when a state-of-the-art school hall was built in 2014.

The job didn’t come without its fair share of challenges, however.

In his first year as headteacher, a criminal on the run from police managed to enter the school and disguise himself as a pupil by stealing a school jumper. He then climbed onto the school roof to escape before surrendering to police.

A spokesman for the school said: “Thousands of local people will have benefitted from Mike’s hard work in both the school and the wider community.

“Mike has never lost the passion and creativity that steered him into teaching design and technology.”

In recent years, Mr Hulme has created dazzling sets for the school’s theatre productions to rival West End productions, including a real “Pride Rock” for its production of The Lion King.

He will be replaced by Judith Enright, who joins QPCS in September from Greenford High School in west London, where she is deputy headteacher.

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